Bharti Airtel slowed hiring in FY26 even as it expanded its contractual workforce. While its overall headcount declined only marginally, the telecom operator saw sharp declines in both fresh recruitment and internal appointments.
According to the company’s FY26 annual report, Airtel’s on-roll workforce stood at 20,116 at the end of March 2026, down 194 employees, or 0.96%, from 20,310 a year earlier. The number of contractual employees rose 8.38% to 80,123 from 73,929, an increase of more than 6,000 employees.
Structural Workforce Pivot
Fresh hiring declined 26.1% year-on-year to 3,751 from 5,078, while internal appointments fell 33.1% to 1,681 from 2,514.
Airtel did not provide a reason for the increase in contractual employees. During FY26, however, the company continued to expand its network, adding fibre home passes, extending rural coverage, rolling out additional 5G infrastructure, and deploying more network sites. Such activities typically require a sizeable contractual workforce, although the company has not linked them to the rise in contract staffing.
Employee churn eased during the year. Overall employee turnover declined 30 basis points to 19.3% from 19.6% in FY25, while voluntary attrition eased 50 basis points to 13.3% from 13.8%.
The annual report also showed that Vice-Chairman and Managing Director Gopal Vittal’s remuneration increased 7.3% year-on-year to Rs 21.73 crore from Rs 20.25 crore. During the same period, Airtel’s India mobile exit average revenue per user (Arpu) rose 4.9% to Rs 257 at the end of March 2026 from Rs 245 a year earlier.
The remuneration of other key managerial personnel is not directly comparable year-on-year because of changes in the company’s leadership structure that took effect January 1, 2026.
The FY26 remuneration disclosed for group Chief Financial Officer Soumen Ray and group Company Secretary Pankaj Tewari covers the period from April 1 to December 31, 2025. Meanwhile, Airtel India Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Shashwat Sharma, and Airtel India Chief Financial Officer Akhil Garg became key managerial personnel from January 1, 2026, and their disclosed remuneration covers only the January-March period.
Airtel’s operating metrics also strengthened during FY26. Its India mobile subscriber base rose to 373.2 million at the end of March 2026 from 361.6 million a year earlier, while its home customer base increased to 14.2 million from 10.0 million.
Exponential Data Demands
Total mobile data consumption grew 27.7% year-on-year to 103.76 billion gigabytes (GB) from 81.26 billion GB, while home broadband data usage increased 64.3% to 50.31 billion GB from 30.62 billion GB.
Average monthly mobile data consumption per smartphone customer rose to 27.5 GB from 24.4 GB, while average monthly per capita data usage among home broadband customers increased to 417 GB per customer from 357 GB.
Bharti Airtel is sharpening its focus on financial services, data centres and cloud computing as it seeks to build its next phase of growth after investing more than Rs 3.3 lakh crore in digital infrastructure over the past decade.
In his message to shareholders in the company’s FY26 annual report, Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said, “Over the last few years, we took a calibrated approach to build new growth engines for Airtel. These bold bets yielded strong outcomes and have grown our conviction in three adjacencies where we believe Airtel has a clear right to win — financial services, data centres and Airtel Cloud.”
The strategy builds on recent investments across these businesses. Airtel has committed Rs 20,000 crore to Airtel Money, after receiving regulatory approval to operate as a non-deposit taking non-banking financial company. “Airtel Money will be suitably capitalised over the years,” Mittal said.
The company is also scaling up its digital infrastructure business. Its data centre arm, Nxtra, recently raised about $1 billion to support its plan to build 1 GW of capacity over the next few years. Airtel Cloud, meanwhile, has secured more than 24 customer deals, with Mittal saying the sovereign cloud platform addresses growing demand for cloud services hosted within India.
Mittal said government measures to support cloud, artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure, including a long-term tax holiday for cloud- and AI-led data centre investments, are expected to accelerate investments in the sector. He added that Airtel’s 5G customer base has reached 188 million, with the 5G Plus network now carrying half of the company’s wireless data traffic.